The Shamefulness Of The Incomplete Squat . . . and other randomness

 

I’ve been heavily into compound exercises lately, which has simplified my program a lot. At first I thought it was too simple–how could I spend an entire workout doing two or three things and expect to get anywhere? This is where the failure of my own personal training education and most comparable programs seems pretty obvious.

I always knew my squats weren’t great, but only today did I finally become honest with myself and fix it. And as we know with squats especially, fixing it usually involves lowering the weight and doing it right, instead of lying to yourself and the world by packing on more weight that you’re not even moving properly.

So all of the education in personal training I had basically amounted to how to make sure beginners don’t hurt themselves using cable machines, and little else. It seems the only people who really know what’s going on are the power lifters. They are the only people I’ve consistently heard the right advice from. Personal trainers are too prone to fads, misinformation, and sales pitches.

When you start to pick apart your squat, you notice just how all-encompassing the squat is. I never realized it before, and a leg workout to me used to be a dozen or more different exercises. And none of them did anything for hip strength. And that lack of hip strength is what I found is screwing up the squats and deadlifts. The quads are only part of it.

This is obvious simple stuff, but something people tend to overlook. The places where my lower body hurts right now would have needed five different machines to equal what the squat did. Only the machines wouldn’t have necessarily helped much with overall strength.

This reminds me of Henry Rollins’ kickass piece called The Iron.   Mainly the part where I mentioned honesty a moment ago. If you cheat or lie when you’re lifting weights, you’ll either just not get results or hurt yourself. The weights almost provide an impartial, uncompromising moral judgment. Of course you can do steroids and pretend to have strength too, but your body will also betray that lie too, eventually. That might be too dramatic for some, but I love extremism sometimes. Like Ayn Rand:

Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one’s consciousness, the quest for a deliberately induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene an evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.

It’s true–nobody who was being honest with themselves could argue with that deep down, but that kind of moral extremism is too much for a society who dedicates a lot of time and money towards increasing its access to drugs as some noble constitutional battle.

The point is that it’s not just about exercise. In the gym, it’s so easy to get sucked into treating weights as makeup, like Rollins says, and get an ego boost out of it. But that doesn’t do anything for actually building strength. I think this aspect is totally missing in the fitness scene. And to be fair, most people who exercise don’t want to complicate it by adding character development into it. Most people couldn’t give a rat’s ass about that. But it absolutely should be something people think about.

While I’m on a moral high horse, I’ll post this awesome song I just heard:

I like it because of the title. Talking about living straight isn’t something anybody should do unless they want to further isolate themselves, but in this rare instance, I’ll do it for a couple lines. Seriously, if James Hetfield can be straight, nobody has an excuse. Not that they did before, but it’s a good reminder of just how fucking easy it is to just not do stupid shit. You just do the same things people always do, only you’re not high. So why do people have to rag on straight edgers so much?

Not that I’m identifying myself as such. I’m just a normal person who doesn’t drink or do drugs. But lately I’ve been listening to some straight edge hardcore bands, and the music is pretty good.

Other randomness:

 

–I heard that if you are trying to conceive and want a male child, all you have to do is ‘hold it in’ for a week. Is this true?

You want week-old sperm to form your firstborn son? The fresher the better, champ. Clear out those pipes daily and make fresh deposits for better results. Forget gender selection.

–How many boxes of 30-capsule probiotics can you stack with reasonable structural integrity?

Sixteen boxes at a maximum height of 1 metre, and this is including structural irregularities added for aesthetic purposes.

–Should I wear a tank top that appears to be ripped halfway down and looks artificially baggy when I go to the gym?

No.

–I wanted to play guitar, but I suck. Should I switch to bass?

No. This is the equivalent of doing a wussy squat. People think bass is easier. It’s not.

–At what temperature should I cook my pork tenderloin?

About 150 degrees fahrenheit.

 

So I don’t know. The moral of this story is apparently to do lots of squats, don’t be a lying sack of shit, and don’t hold it in for the sake of gender selection. Oh, and buy my book.

Speaking of which, there’s a thing over at Long and Short Reviews where  you can win a copy of Blightcross by reading my Christmas guest post and commenting. The winner will be snatched from the comments on the 22nd.